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Last week, more than 100 international stakeholders met in Brussels, Belgium, at the 6th Open Auto Drive Forum (OADF), to discuss the latest cross-domain topics in the area of autonomous driving, as the group continues in its aim of a globally-applicable ecosystem of production-ready automotive standards for connected self-driving vehicles.

Hosted by TISA (Traveler Information Services Association), the 6th OADF meeting attracted numerous participants representing different sectors, including auto makers, map and self-driving systems providers, and experts in the fields of autonomous driving, sensor systems, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and international standardization. OADF’s objective is to act as an open discussion platform for cross-domain topics in the area of autonomous driving that require cooperation throughout the industry, and to present the latest developments and achievements toward a world of connected autonomous vehicles.

During the morning session, the forum saw a number of presentations from industry and academia on autonomous driving projects focusing on standardization, tests on public roads, and high precision maps, and discussed the legal implications of vehicle automation. The second part of the meeting was reserved for sessions on standardization requirements for environmental model interfaces and HD maps, on live map delivery chain and backend integrity levels, and on metadata for map quality.

Dr Volker Sasse, from NavInfo, an OADF speaker and chairman of the Navigation Data Standard (NDS) Association, concluded that the conference was a successful step forward for the development of autonomous driving. “The time of simple navigation is over. The autonomous driving (AD) revolution means shifting from individualism to collectivism, and our OMEGA project takes care of these relevant future AD requirements,” noted Sasse. “The AD information, which is always supported by highly accurate and up to date practices, is selected in flexible geometric or attribute-based portions, and will be stored and distributed in multiple locations. Therefore, each information user is simultaneously also a collector, meaning the individual serves the community. All standardization organizations cooperate in this brave new world.”

TISA’s executive director, Matthias Unbehaun, commented, “Active participation in the OADF is an important undertaking for TISA, and mutually beneficial for both organizations. Real-time, high-precision traffic information is vital for autonomously driving vehicles. The complex requirements of an automated driving situation, together with the specific conditions of M2M communication in that context, create a formidable challenge that propels our current developments toward next-generation traffic data standards.”

OADF organizes meetings every four months in three different regions: Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The forum is intended to give all stakeholders the opportunity to present their issues and jointly work on solutions across different standardization organizations and companies in the area of autonomous driving. The consortia consists of NDS, the ADASIS forum, TISA, and the SENSORIS universal Vehicle-to-Cloud data format, and is committed to align its efforts to generate a streamlined approach toward global autonomous vehicle standards. Task forces address challenges that have been identified in the meetings. The next OADF meeting will take place on May 22, in North America, with its exact location to be confirmed.